


Holly Days

by Deifire



Category: Eureka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 21:18:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holly's about to marry the man she loves. But how do you plan the perfect honeymoon trip when every vacation you've ever taken has been a total disaster?</p><p>Maybe getting advice from the women of Eureka isn't the best idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holly Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aeiouna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeiouna/gifts).



There were things Holly Marten had considered before agreeing to marry Douglas Fargo. 

They talked about the important things, and knew they were on the same page as far as careers, kids—or at least the possible shared creation of an artificial intelligence, though they were thinking of maybe getting a puppy first—finances, the relative merits of D.C. versus Marvel comics, and home ownership.

There were things Holly was beginning to realize she hadn’t considered quite as carefully. Such as, for example, the fact that weddings are typically large social gatherings during which the bride spends the entire day as the center of attention, something that was well outside of Holly’s comfort zone.

Which was why as the day loomed closer, she more and more frequently found herself in Eureka, having tea at the Café Diem with Allison Blake, Jo Lupo, and Grace Monroe. As three of her three closest female friends, and as women who'd been married fairly recently, they tended to have good advice on such things. So she thought she'd come to them with her current dilemma.

“I don't know what to do on the honeymoon,” Holly explained, stirring her tea.

“Um…” said Jo.

“Er…” said Allison. 

“What do you…?” Grace began.

Holly looked up from her beverage at the faces of the other three women and realized the potential misunderstanding. “Oh, I don’t mean the sex part of the honeymoon,” said Holly. “Doug and I do just fine in that department. We’ve had lots of practice. Plus, we just found this site online that specializes in erotic uses for chocolate, combining two of the very best things in the whole world about being corporeal, and…was I oversharing again?”

Jo nodded, “A little.”

“Oh,” said Holly. “And now it’s awkward.”

“Holly, maybe you should tell us the exact problem,” said Grace gently.

“It’s just that for our honeymoon, Doug wants to…” Holly looked around, then lowered her voice. “He thinks we should take some time off and take a trip together. You know, like a vacation.”

Jo looked puzzled. “I think still think I’m missing something.”

“I’m not _good_ at vacations,” said Holly. “I mean, I like travel, but every time I try to take some time off and maybe go somewhere for the express purpose of having fun, it ends in total disaster.”

“Every time?” asked Grace.

“Every time I can remember. I get carsick quite easily, I don’t care for crowds, and sometimes my idea of entertainment is, well, different from other people’s. This one time when I was ten, my family went to an amusement park, and I got kicked out for sneaking behind the scenes and trying to program some more realism into the robotic dinosaur diorama…”

“Holly,” Allison began.

“And this other time, when I went to Space Camp, I accidentally upset a few of my roommates, which eventually resulted in a not-so-hilarious prank involving the multi-axis trainer...”

“Holly,” started Jo.

“Learning to scuba drive was an epic failure. There was a particularly traumatic senior year trip to the Grand Canyon. And then there was this time in college my dorm mates talked me into going on spring break with them. Which was fun up until the point where…let’s just say I realized that if you suddenly think you’re on the verge of major breakthrough in the field of high-energy astrophysics after a few too many Jell-O shots, you should probably wait until you’ve slept it off before deciding whether or not any experiments are actually a good idea...”

“Holly,” said Allison. “The point of a honeymoon trip should be you and Fargo spending time together doing something you both enjoy. Isn’t there any place you’ve always wanted to go with him?”

“What about Comic-Con?” said Jo. “The timing would be right. And, yes, I'm sad that I know that.”

“See, the thing is, I’ve been,” said Holly. “Right before Senator Wen asked me to come to Eureka, actually. It was almost fun. I mean, I had a kick-ass Princess Leia costume and everything. But it’s also very much a crowded social situation, and you may have noticed I can have a little bit of anxiety in those types of environments. So I got the idea to infuse the MP3 files on my iPod with neuro-linguistic programming to help me. In the end, that didn’t exactly turn out so well. I might want to try again someday, but if something's going to go that wrong again, I'd rather it not be during my first days as Doug's wife.”

“So no huge crowds. What about CERN?” Grace asked. “It’s not exactly people-free, but I remember you and Fargo kept talking about…”

“Going to make fun of their tiny little Hadron Collider? We did that last year as part of a working trip. Unfortunately, there was this tiny little temporal anomaly incident.”

“Temporal anomaly?”

“Yep, and getting stuck for three days in 16th century Switzerland isn’t exactly as fun as you might think. Even if I did get some really cool period costume ideas for our next LARP.”

“Didn’t you also once mention going to Alaska together?” asked Jo. 

“Did it. Six months ago. It began as a really fascinating study of the lower thermosphere, but ended with us almost freezing to death.”

"Wow. I'm not sure if I'm more comforted or disturbed to know that kind of luck doesn't actually end even after you move out of Eureka," Grace said.

"With me and vacations, it never ends at all," said Holly. 

“Okay, so probably best to avoid cold weather destinations,” said Allison. “As well as any place especially hazardous. What about the beach? A chance to relax and do nothing. I know when Jack finally took me to Fiji…”

“Meh,” said Holly.

“’Meh?’” echoed Allison. “Fiji is meh?”

“Relaxing and doing nothing is meh,” said Holly. “It reminds me too much of being stuck in the Matrix that time I was dead. Granted, I did finally get around to making a world record daisy chain—or one that would have been a world record if it had actually existed in the real world instead of a virtual Eureka—but I got sooo bored. I hate not being able to do anything useful. I know Doug feels the same way.”

“So what we’re looking for is a destination with as few people as possible,” said Jo. “One that caters to non-traditional ideas of fun.”

“Preferably,” said Holly.

“A destination in a relatively safe environment,” said Allison. “But not so safe as to be uninteresting.”

“Exactly,” said Holly.

Grace looked thoughtful. “You know, I need to talk to Henry first, but I just may have an idea.”

“Really?” said Holly. “That’s great! Wait. Is this the sort of idea where I can bring Star Trek-themed lingerie, because…okay, that might be oversharing again.”

Grace smiled. “Just give me a day to talk to Henry.”

 

***

_A few weeks later…_

“Best wife ever,” said Douglas Fargo. With only a slight bit of effort, he scooped her up and carried her over the threshold of their destination. “How did you think of it?”

“Two weeks alone on a simulated manned deep space mission in the brand new Zephyrus spacecraft? It just came to me. With a little help from some of our friends.”

“This. Is. Awesome!” said Fargo.

“They’ve stocked the ship with our favorite games, movies, and TV shows for recreation,” said Holly. “So it’ll totally be like having some time off, but at the same time, our experiences here will give the Eureka team important data they can use to prepare the ship and crew for the actual mission. And the best part is we’re not actually leaving town, so there’s not the risk of death, dismemberment or potential kidnapping. Like you get when you try go into space for real.”

“I love you, Holly,” said Fargo.

“I love you, too,” said Holly. She raised an eyebrow in what she hoped was a suggestive and not at all twitchy manner. “We’ve got a couple hours before we need to be ready for simulated launch.”

It must have worked, because suddenly Doug was pressed again her, kissing her intensely. They moved backwards, locked in an embrace, until Holly felt her bottom bump against a control panel. She put a hand down for balance, and accidentally flipped one or two levers.

There was a noise that she recognized, with a sinking feeling, as the distinctly un-simulated sound of engines rumbling to life, as a pleasant recorded voice stated, “Launch sequence initiated.”

"Not again!" cried Fargo.

There was no way this should be happening. Then again, there was no way she should have expected her string of bad vacation luck to end with a trip to Eureka.

“Oh frak,” she muttered.

***

Eventually, one deep space rescue and many years later, she and Fargo would tell a highly edited-for-content version of the story to their AI grandchildren in which Holly was forced to admit for the first time that maybe all vacations weren’t so bad after all. 

At that moment, though, all she could do was calculate how many times and to how many people she was going to say "I told you so" if they ever got back to Earth.


End file.
